April 30, 2013

The business side is low-key: Asimple, stylized mountain logo, his name, and the words "Adventurer, Author,Speaker." But turn it over and you'llfind a picture of Whittaker--or "Big Jim," as he was known then andever since--standing astride the summit of the tallest mountain on the planet,ice axe raised over his head in what must have been a heady mix of triumph,joy, and disbelief (relief would have to wait until after the descent). Hewas--is--the first American to accomplish the feat, and either the 10th or 11th overall, depending on how you're counting. Nawang Gombu, who took thatpicture, was Whittaker's climbing partner that day--May 1, 1963, 50 years agotomorrow--and as Big Jim tells it, they chose to summit as a team, together.

Whittaker's and Gombu's achievement wasn't the onlyhighlight of the expedition. Three weeks later, on another spine of Everest's three-sidedpyramid, Thomas Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld drove a new route up the perilous WestRidge, over the summit, and down Whittaker's South Col route, pausing overnight to bivouac at 28 thousand feet. It was the first traverse of an eight-thousandmeter peak, but they had no choice"”their route up provided no way back down. As an incredible feat of daring and perserverance, mountaineers consider it to be one of the greatest accomplishmentsin Everest (and climbing) history. Even a half-century later, it has been rarely repeated.

May 1, 1963, was a life-changing moment for Whittaker: Hesuddenly found himself befriended by the Kennedys--vacationing with the family and hosting them in his own home--andlater ran RFK's campaign in Washington State; he became CEO of REI (RecreationalEquipment Incorporated--he was previously its first full-time employee); he led two expeditions to K2, the second of which put thefirst Americans atop the world's second-highest peak; and he returned toEverest in 1990 to lead a team comprised ofCold War antagonists to the top. And those are just the highlights.

But the unassuming kid from West Seattle stayed the same. Hesimply feels amazed at his own fortune: lucky.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary, Mountaineers Books haspublished extraordinary new editions of Whittaker's autobiography, A Life on the Edge, and Hornbein'saccount of his and Unsoeld's epic climb, Everest:The West Ridge. Both are oversized hardcovers,filled with incredible images (many by Whittaker's wife, Dianne Roberts, whophotographed their K2 expeditions and has an amazing business card of her own), with new forewords by climber/authors EdViesturs and Jon Krakauer. These are essential books for mountaineers, armchairor otherwise.

When you look at pictures of these men, they are almost alwayssmiling (especially Unsoeld), even as some of them are ported downmountains without so many of the toes they started up with. Certainly there are grittier images available, and maybe those arejust the pictures they selected for the books, but I'd like to think not. Whenasked why he was so determined to climb Everest, British climber George Malloryfamously said, "Because it's there." Whittaker, Tom Hornbein, and therest of the 1963 expedition didn't climb the mountain because it was there;they climbed it because they were here, present on what Big Jim calls "thismagical planet." They were living with purpose, and they knew it. Jim and Dianne still are.

Though he's been busy with media and events to mark thedate, Jim and Dianne made time to stop by the Brave Horse Tavern inSeattle's South Lake Union neighborhood for a chat about Everest, the Kennedys,and more. What follows is an edited transcript of that conversation.

(Click here to learn more about Everest, K2, and otherclassics of mountaineering"”many of which are published by Mountaineersbooks--and visit Jim Whittaker's web site for more information, includingadditional photographs from his personal collection. )

Jon For Youwere specifically picked for the Everest team due to your Mt. Rainierexperience. Did that prepare you the way you thought it might?

Jim Whittaker: Iguided on Rainier through college, for three summers, and I climbed a lot, andI was on the ski patrol. So I'd done a lot of different things in the outdoors.(On McKinley, we had an accident--one of our team got a broken ankle and ittook us a while to get down. I meant toask Norman [Dyhrenfurth, the expedition leader] whether that was what really drew his attention, because itwas on nation-wide news that we were stranded on the summit of Mt. McKinley.)

Yeah, it did, it did. The thing is, the Northwest has gotthe glaciers. The East Coast, The middle states, even the Rockies don't havethe glaciers. But here, Mt. Rainier, Mt. Hood, they've got snow andice--everything that Mount Everest has except that extra fourteen thousandfeet. We have the crevasses, the seracs, we've got the weather--incredibly badweather could hit.... So it was a great training ground. So I went over fairlyconfident--maybe overconfident--that we could knock off the mountain.

JF: How much moreintense was it once you got there? You mention the irony is that the hardestpart of climbing Everest--from the South anyway--is the Khumbu Icefall. [If aglacier is a frozen river, then the icefall is a cataract infreeze-frame--except when it's not. 10-story blocks of ice, called seracs,frequently"”and utterly unpredictably"”tumble free.]

JW: Yeah, fromNepal, exactly. The icefall that the whole team had to get through. This is anobjective danger over which you have no control. You don't know when thatwall's going to come off, when the glacier's going to move.

You look at it and you think, "This is crazy." Any sanemountaineer would never climb it. It's like looking at the Nisqually Icefall onRainier, and you think, "What the hell would you want to go up thaticefall for?" So you go up the Cowlitz or the Ingraham [glaciers]. Nobodywants to be there, because it's just luck--you don't know when blocks of ice asbig as this building will come off. It's a roll of the dice. The first day, weset a route all the way up. Unsoeld, who was the climbing leader at the time,said, "Jim, you're the ice guy. Go for it." I said, "Yeah, OKWilli." [laughs]

Looking at this wall, I had to jump a crevasse to get ontothe wall. I started up and I don't get all the way--I poop out. And Willi said,"Jim, you're turning blue." That's when I began to realize that thealtitude is such a difficult thing to overcome. When when I first got there[base camp], I looked at this thing and I thought, "What the hell. We'reonly talking about 11,000 vertical feet from this camp." OK, Rainier is9,000 vertical feet from Paradise to the summit ... A couple more verticalfeet... I can do Rainier in five hours and 20 minutes, to the summit."

JF: No problem.

JW: No problem!So again I start out the first day, and man, I'm just sucking air. You're goinginto the Death Zone.

I was 34 then. I was in terrific shape--I trained a coupleof years just to build up and be ready for it. But then I realized],"Ohhh. This is going to take a while." I came down, and then the nextday Jake [Breitenbach] was killed in the icefall. The second day on themountain--the second day of climbing--aftera month of walking in to get to the bottom of the mountain.

JF: But at thatpoint there was really no going back, after years of planning.

JW: Most of usthought that. But some thought that they wanted to come back home.

JF: So then, whenyou're on an expedition like this, it takes weeks to ferry supplies up themountain....

JW: Almost twoweeks. Basically you tried to put a camp a day apart with enough supplies. Soyou gotta camp high enough to go to the summit and get back to that camp in oneday.... It took us six camps, up to 27,500 feet.

JF: Usually climbers make the final attemptfrom the South Col, right? [A saddle between Everest and the neighboringpeak"”about 26 thousand feet in elevation]

JW: They do now,because there's a route. They know the route. We didn't know the route. We couldn'tfind it in the darkness.... We had to have daylight, so we left at daybreak andmade it back just before dark. The team [three] weeks later didn't get back intime--they were trapped by darkness and had to spend the night out, a bivouac.

JF: When you madeyour attempt for the top, it was you and Gombu, who was one of the Sherpas withyou. How did you get over the Hillary Step? The Hillary Step is"¦ I'll let you explain it since you've beenthere.

JW: It's steep[laughs]. It's steep, and it's what stopped the first team of the British whenthey got up to that point. They looked up at that and said, "We're goingto turn back." And then the next day, Hillary and Tenzing got up to thatpoint, and as Hillary said, "We knocked the bastard off." [EdmundHillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first climbers to summit Everest"”at leastthe first confirmed summiters"”JF]

Some people who have done that said they couldn't imaginedoing that technical climb at that altitude, which makes it even moredifficult. Do you know what a cornice is?

JF: Yeah.

JW: I was lookingup at it and there's a cornice going into Tibet, overhanging Tibet. So I could,there's place between the rock and the snow where I could wedge in, so I climbedup it--and it was difficult--and then I belayed Gombu up. And then we wentalong the final section until we got to the top. It's not that far once you geton top. You go over the South Summit and a little saddle.

We only spent 20 minutes. We got up there and we thought,"Son of a bitch. We climbed it."

JF: And you wereshort on oxygen.

JW: We ran out onthe summit, so we were sucking air. We were in the Death Zone. Nothing supportslife above 20 thousand feet. You die at 21 or 22 thousand feet because yourbody won't oxidize food--you can't metabolize, so eventually you'll die. Andthe higher you go, the more you run out of oxygen. So there, we didn't know howlong we could live. Hillary had taken his mask off on the summit and timed it.And it didn't feel good, so he put it back on. So we're kind of pushing theboundary, we're at the death line. We hadto get down. I said "Gombu, we've got to get down. We've got to get down." We had to get down to a tank that we lefthalfway up. Instead of carrying two 13-pound bottles of oxygen, we dropped onewhere I thought there'd be enough oxygen in the other to go to the summit, andback down to that tank. Then we only carry 13 pounds.... But we ran out.

JF: You had a45-pound pack, too.

JW: Yeah--a heavy pack. Two cameras. I had aradio, which didn't work. I had an Eddie Bauer sleeping bag, in case we had tobivouac. And two water bottles that were ice.DUMB. We spent a couple hours melting ice for water, then we stick them in theoutside pocket of our pack.... 35 below zero. [laughs] Andthen, to show how dumb we were, when I got the bottle and went to take a drink,you know, "I'll be damned! It's ice!" We put them both back in thepack and carried the ice up. Extra weight up to the summit and back down. Solidice. It was DUMB.

There's a snow plume going off the summit [Everest's peak isliterally in the jet stream, and a strong wind is usually blowing intoTibet"”JF]. Hillary was in the valley next door doing a school for the Sherpa,and he looked up the mountain and said, "Nobody will climb the mountaintoday."

JF: But you didit.

JW: [groans] Itwas a hell of a day. Nobody else left their tents that day, on the team. Toofriggin' cold! The weather's lousy!

You have to leave.You had two years getting equipment together. Jake was killed. You've got togo. You've got to go.

JF: Did it matterto you at all that you were the first on your team, or the first American?

JW: I wasdelighted to do it. In a way it freed up Hornbein and Unsoeld to attempt theWest Ridge. If I hadn't gotten it, they wouldn't have had a chance to try theWest Ridge. Because the object wasthat we going to try to get an American to the top. That was the goal.

JF: Was there alot of competition between the South Col team and West Ridge teams?

JW: Yeeeah, but it was all gentlemanly. Hornbein wasconsidered somewhat of a nut [laughs]. Give credit to Dyhrenfurth and toUnsoeld. Willi was good. He was the climbing leader on the mountain;Dyhrenfurth was the official leader. But Willi kind of held down Tom a littlebit. We were competing to get some of the high-elevation porters to carry onour side. They [the Sherpas] wanted to carry on the West Side. We put the campsin, but they wouldn't help us put supplies in. We put fixed rope in so that theywould not fall off going up. And most of the team went to the West Ridge.There were only a few of us on the South Col route. That bothered me some,because there were only four of us trying to put the route in. And yeah, wewere extended.

JF: In your book,the Everest chapter ends probably a third through it"”there's a lot that happensafter. When you came back, one of the first things you did was greet thepresident. After he was assassinated you led Bobby up Mt. Kennedy in Canada,which had been recently renamed after JFK. What was it like for a kid from WestSeattle to become tight with a family like the Kennedys? [There's a wonderfulpicture in the book of Jim teaching "John-John" to ski while Jackie looks overtheir shoulders--JF]

JW: I wasdelighted about Kennedy. That's one of those times when your tears freeze onyour parka. I stopped below the summit, and I said, "Bobby, it'syours." And so he walked the last 50 feet in unbroken snow to stand on topof the peak named after his brother, the highest unclimbed mountain in Canada.And he was the first human being... the first ascent of Mt. Kennedy.

But then we're back in Washington D.C. I did the [NationalGeographic] article, and Bobby says, "Stay with me." So he has a party.I'm sitting at the table, a kid from West Seattle, and here's McNamara--

JW: Yeah, RobertMcNamara. And all these dignitaries from all over the place. John Glenn wasthere. And I was sitting down, just hunkered down, trying to hide from all theseguys. And then John Glenn goes [taps his water glass with a spoon] and hestands up.

He's the man who orbited the planet a year earlier--thefirst American to orbit the planet--and he says, "I'd like to make a toastto Jim Whittaker, the first American to climb Mt. Everest, and a chimpanzeedidn't do it first." What a neat guy! He became a good friend.

JF: Can we talk alittle about the 1990 Mt. Everest Peace Climb?

JW: Before the [Berlin] Wall came down I said,"What can we do?" Why not have a climb with Soviets, Chinese, andAmericans? Rope them up to someone who is an enemy, trusting your lives to thatperson. And you're going to climb together, and stand an American, a Soviet,and a Chinese on the summit with their arms around each other, demonstratingfor the world what can be done through friendship and cooperation.

It was 20 years of Earth Day in 1990. So, two goals: Put thethree countries on the summit. Clean the planet off from the top down. And sowe did it. We did it. We buried two tons of garbage, and we put 20 people onthe summit, which is amazing.

Dianne Roberts:That was before the big guided climbs started. Now they take these giganticparties--sometimes there's 50 people.

JW: We had noSherpa help. We did all the stuff ourselves. We carried the loads, we put thetents in, put the camps in. We put the first Soviet woman on the summit. It wasamazing that this worked. Everybody said, "My God. Internationalexpeditions don't work just because peopleeat different food." We couldn't even speak in some cases.

DR: We had agiant satellite dish. We had to get all this permission from the military to beable to take this satellite phone over there. There were only two of them thatexisted and one of them broke. I was at home [in Port Townsend, WA] managing,because our kids were really little. [Part of the communications link] was aship operating at sea, so if I would try to call them on Everest when theydidn't have the phone turned on--they had to start the generator to do it--Iwould get a message saying that "The ship that you are calling is notoperating in this ocean at this time. Please try your call later." And ourphone bill was $17,000 for one month!

JW: It was great.I talked to Bush--to President Bush--at 4 o'clock in the morning. At a Colemanstove, sitting there, turning [the phone] on. "Whittaker, I've got thepresident on the phone."

JF: To Dianne'spoint about the change in climbing culture. With so many people buying theirway to the top, do you think it diminishes the accomplishment? Or do you thinkit's beneficial to expose more people to this kind of experience?

JW: [pauses] Yeah... yes. [laughs]

Ah, look. For one thing, it's good, I think, for the Sherpa.It's really lifted the economic opportunities of the Sherpa, more so than inKathmandu. But the mountain is too full of people. They're going to have toregulate some of the activity, because you don't want to have bottlenecks. Ourson, Leif, had to wait an hour for people that were coming down off the Step--theHillary Step--before he could go up. It's really narrow, with the pitch. Andyou're breathing [bottled] oxygen. If you run out, you're going to die.Nowadays, these are the hazards, just from the population.

JF: That was theproblem with the '96 tragedy.

JW: A lot ofpeople on top. They couldn't find their way off. When you reach the summit ofthe mountain, that's half the climb. You've got to get back off.

JF: Aside fromEverest, you also led the first American K2 ascent. [To Dianne] And you were there,too.

DR: I definitelywas.

JW: She went to26,000 feet on K2 without any bottled oxygen. She set the altitude record forwomen.

JF: What wouldyou like people to take away from both of those achievements?

JW: Life is anadventure--as it should be. Exploring and doing... Get outside before you leavethis magical planet. That's the message I'd like to get out, is that nature's awonderful teacher. Get outside.

Explore this magic planet. Get out there. Some of them willlearn to love it, and if they love it, they'll take care of it. You're notgoing to vote for a virgin forest if you don't know what the hell a forest is.You're not going to protect the sea if you haven't sailed or if you haven'tstood on the shore and looked at the incredible 70% of the planet that isliquid.

JW: [laughs] Ah.One night, at Camp IV, up high on the Lhotse face. I was there with Gombu, andthere was a whistling noise. And Gombu said, "Jim! Jim! Yeti? Yeti?"I think "¦ their mothers said If youaren't a good boy, the Yeti's gonna get you. But I said, "Windwhistling through tent poles, Gombu. Wind through tent poles." "OK,Jim."

No, I haven't seen a Yeti, nor seen a footprint. But a lotof rumors. Who knows? It's a big country--the Himalayas are huge. There's a lotof places no one has ever been. Nobodyhas ever been. So there are places something could hide out, if they wanted.

April 29, 2013

For our new "What Were They Reading" feature, we ask writers what they read whileworking on their latest book.

This time around, we asked Sofia Samatar, whose first novel A Stranger in Olondria was just published by Small Beer Press. Samatar is an American of Somali and Swiss German Mennonite background. Her writing has appeared in Clarkesworld, Stone Telling, and Strange Horizons. She wrote A Stranger in Olondria in Yambio, South Sudan, where she worked as an English teacher.

Her novel, which recently received a starred review from Library Journal,follows Jevick, a pepper merchant's son, who has been raised on stories ofOlondria, a distant land where books are as common as they are rare in hishome. When his father dies and Jevick takes his place on the yearly sellingtrip to Olondria, Jevick's revels in Olondria's Rabelaisian Feast of Birds, heis pulled drastically off course and becomes haunted by the ghost of anilliterate young girl. And things get more complicated from there.

Here's what she had to say when we asked her what she read while working on the book"¦

"I wrote the first draft of A Stranger in Olondria in Yambio, South Sudan, where I taught high school English. I was there from 1998 to 2001, and while Yambio wasfairly secure, the country was at war. There was a 6 p.m. curfew, and nointernet or TV, so in the evenings you could either play cards, read, or listento the BBC. My husband, Keith Miller, and I did a lot of reading, and both ofus wrote novels.

"The only books we had were the ones we brought with us, so we read them over and over. I wasused to reading The Lord of the Rings every year, but in Yambio I readother books multiple times: Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping, Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, Carole Maso's AVA, EliasKhoury's Little Mountain. I got really into big books, because I was always afraid of running out of things to read before we could get to Nairobi, where we went to stay with my in-laws during school breaks. The Nairobibookshops were full of those Penguin Classics with the peach-colored spines,and these were perfect, because they were cheap and good and LARGE. I readTolstoy and George Eliot and Jane Austen in those Penguins. I read Dracula for the first time that way, too, and it was like, where has this been all my life? And then there was Proust: so good, so verbose! By the time we left Sudan, I'd read all of Remembrance of Things Past"”twice.

"Sometimes it seems odd to me that I wrote a fantasy novel while reading so little genre fantasy. Tolkien, Lewis, Le Guin, Mervyn Peake if you count him: that was it.But of course, if you desire the fantastic, you'll find it everywhere. TheGothic atmosphere of Jane Eyre, the chilling music of "The Lady of Shalott," the uncanny doublings of Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North. And then there was Frankenstein. I bought a little abridged edition of it in Nairobi, and read it out loud to a new group of students every year. Everyone loved it. There's something so satisfying and real about that story, and it came through powerfully in the pared-down version I read. Mystudents used to cheer and pound on their desks at the good parts"”once theassistant headmaster came in to find out what was going on! It was not only oneof the best reading experiences of my life, but an education in the power ofnarrative.

"Now, when I look at A Stranger in Olondria, I see the marks of my readingeverywhere. My main character, Jevick, is haunted by a ghost, but he calls heran angel: that's from Stephen Mitchell's introduction to his translations ofRilke's poetry. At one point Jevick lists his impressions of a new town in a sort of dreamlike way: that's from Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. Also, my first draft was 200,000 words long"”twice as long as the final version. That was Proust."

April 25, 2013

If you keep your ear to the food-world ground, you may have heard that Anthony Bourdain--chef, storyteller, tastemaker, traveler, and fearless eater of Parts Unknown--is launching a line of books. Aside from rumblings of a Mark Miller kickboxing memoir, he's mostly (no surprise) focused on food. His inaugural offering, The Prophets of Smoked Meat, comes from Daniel "Barbecue Snob" Vaughn of Full Custom Gospel BBQ blog fame. It's aptly billed as a "rollicking journey through the heart of Texas Barbecue." You'll find the occasional recipe, but it's much more of a guidebook and tribute to the holy men of Texas meat than a traditional cookbook. It's also on my list of May picks for the Best Books of the Month in Cookbooks, Food & Wine.

Vaughn: There is only one state where the barbecue culture holds the brisket up to the highest regard, and that is Texas. The brisket is the hardest of the smoked meats to master and the hardest to do well consistently. In Texas we celebrate great brisket by not messing with it. If it's done right then you slice it pencil thick and slap it on a piece of butcher paper. It's naked, quivering and vulnerable, so it has to stand on its own.

Bourdain: Is enough ever enough BBQ for you?

Vaughn: I recently took a road trip to North Carolina just for barbecue. On the first day we ate at seven different barbecue joints across the eastern side of the state and came back to Raleigh where we were staying. We were stuffed, but wanted some pie at Poole's Diner. At the counter there we learned from another diner that a place down the street did North Carolina pulled pork empanadas. It was midnight and we were beyond the uncomfortable point, but we paid our bill and immediately went to order barbecue empanadas for our real nightcap. The short answer: No, I don't get sick of barbecue, especially good barbecue.

Bourdain: Define "the cookie"; also, "pink ring."

Vaughn: The sugar cookie is the intersection of fat, salt, smoke and time at the corners of a brisket slice. When the fat starts to render and contracts it concentrates the flavors of the rub and the smoke and the fat nugget even tastes a little sweet like a buttery sugar cookie. The smoke ring is the pink line just beneath the crust of smoked meat. It doesn't taste like smoke, but it does show that the meat has been cooked at a low temperature for a long period of time with good air (smoke) flow across the meat while it cooks. When those all come together a smoke ring forms and chances are the meat will taste good and smoky.

Vaughn: I prefer the discovery of barbecue joints around the state and the country rather than eating bite after bite of faceless barbecue at a competition. Learning the stories of who is cooking your meat and how it ended up on your plate the way it did is part of the fun, and that connection isn't possible in the blind tasting setting of a competition. I'm also a bit of a purist, so simple seasoning with salt, pepper and smoke is what I prefer on my smoked meat. Loads of brown sugar and squeezable margarine that are common on the competition are no way to treat a defenseless brisket in my opinion.

Bourdain: What are some warning signs which definitely indicate imminent arrival of sub-optimal BBQ?

Vaughn: If you don't see a stick of wood around the property, there's really no need to get out of the car. Barbecue joint signs that include 'catfish' or 'salad bar' are also dubious, but I still try to go most anywhere that serves smoked meat.

Bourdain: Does anyone in NYC come close to "great" BBQ by Texas standards? Anywhere else up north?

Vaughn: I haven't eaten at a barbecue joint in New York that comes close to the greats in Texas, but I'm hopeful that something will come up in my search when I visit again in May. Smoque in Chicago is the furthest north that I've eaten great brisket.

Bourdain: Is wrapping brisket or ribs in foil EVER okay? Why not?

Vaughn: Foil is known as the "Texas crutch." Once the briskets are wrapped, it's hard for them to dry out because they steam inside the foil package. This might result in tender brisket, but it sacrifices a great crust and can easily lead to slightly smoky pot roast instead of well smoked brisket. It's hard to condone, but there are a few places out there that can still use it successfully. The best joints either don't wrap at all or wrap them in butcher paper.

Bourdain: Sauce or no sauce?

Vaughn: Good barbecue does not require sauce. Period.

Bourdain: When Australians refer to the "Barbie," what the hell are they talking about?

Vaughn: I have no idea. I think I've only seen American actors with fake Australian accents refer to the "Barbie," but I think it has something to do with grilling, which isn't barbecue.

Bourdain: Which BBQ joint would you currently choose to die in?

Vaughn: Franklin Barbecue. When I die I want to be forever preserved in a brisket fat confit from Aaron Franklin's brisket.

Bourdain: What is the best beverage to enjoy with BBQ in an ideal situation?

Vaughn: I love beer, but I don't love it with barbecue. I'd rather have something sweet, so give me a Dr. Pepper or a half sweet, half unsweet iced tea.

Bourdain: What's the most egregious misconception about BBQ?

Vaughn: The most egregious misconception about barbecue is that every pitmaster has some sort of secret ingredient or sauce that makes their barbecue superlative. To a true pitmaster the rub is about as important as the brand of sandpaper is to a master wood carver. If you think knowing that "secret" will substitute for having the skill and experience of a master, then you're an idiot.

A Christmas Carol, PeterPan, How to Win Friends and Influence People "“ I discovered them all when I wasa teenager and have all had a huge impact on my life ever since.

Pen Envy - Book you wish you'd written?

Hundreds, but probably TheGreat Gatsby. In little over 100 pages it tells you everything about life,America, striving for something better, dreams and expectations, and thetragedy that can come with getting exactly what you want (or think you want).

Book that made you want to become a writer?

The Road Less Travelled "“It's one of the most honest and down-to-earth books about life and love everwritten, and it bravely dispels a lot of the bad myths about romantic love andrelationships that people hold onto for years.

Most memorable author moment?

Feeling and smelling my ownbook in a bookstore! I think for anyone who loves books you fall in love withthe object itself. Especially when it's your own.

What are you obsessed with now?

Boxing "“ It's my escape andoutlet. It's where I get to leave all the talking and words behind and justrelieve stress.

What are you stressed about now?

My speaking tour of the US.I'm constantly hopping between states over the next month, and I finallyunderstand how comedians feel when they take a show on the road and all themadness that comes with that. It's mainly the instability of it all thatbecomes stressful, but having moved to LA from London over the last year I'vehad to get used to change quickly.

Whatare you psyched about now?

In the next couple of monthsI'm releasing a programme to turn people into masters of human dynamics in boththeir personal and professional lives. It's exciting because it's about yourentire lifestyle and people skills in work, health, friendship, family, andrelationships.

What talent or superpower would you like to have (not including flight orinvisibility)?

Damn, you stole my twofavourites! Top of the list after that has to be the ability to stop time "“ youcould have an unbelievable amount of fun. If not, then breathing underwater orbeing omnilingual (the ability to speak any language).

What's your most prized/treasured possession?

A watch my Dad gave me justbefore I left for Los Angeles. My Dad has always loved watches and him givinghis to me at a key moment in my life was a touching moment.

What's next for you?

I'm on Eva Longoria's NBC TVshow Ready for Love as one of the expertmatchmakers. I'm also touring the US giving my 'Get the Guy' seminars, and planto release a lifestyle course called 'IMPACT', which is something I'm reallyexcited about.

Favorite line?

I love theline: "Every passing minute is another chance to turn it all around"

It's fromthe movie Vanilla Sky, and the sentiment reflects my absolute core belief inthe power individuals have in every tiny moment. It's the same with dating. Itonly takes one tiny decision to take that risk, to be sexy in a way you'venever tried before, to flash a cheeky smile that puts you on someone's radar,or to speak to that person who can't take their eyes off you, and suddenly theworld opens up. People's lives can change in a single minute in those preciouseveryday moments, which is something I've always strived to demonstrate withGet the Guy.

Favoritemethod of procrastination? Temptation? Vice?

I'm not a big TV viewer, butI am one of those people who can burn through an HBO boxset in about threedays. But I've somehow convinced myself that 'Mad Men' is a form of research soI've reached a comfortable place with it now.

It's one I mention in the book.It's an email from my oldest client, who simply sent me this:

"I want you to pass on amessage to everyone you coach. I'm 83 years old and I'm retired. Through yourcoaching I've met the man of my dreams. We're spending our days right nowbuilding a boat, and when it's done, we're going to sail away in it together.If it can happen to me at my age, with everything I've been through in my life,it can happen to anyone."

My heart swells every time Iread that. And her message that it can happen at any age, no matter what youthink is holding you back, is the most important lesson I've ever learnt aboutlove.

April 24, 2013

After transforming the way we think about our relationship with plants and the world-altering impact of what we eat, Michael Pollan invites us to rediscover the elemental pleasure of transforming raw ingredients into meals--through grilling (fire), braising (water), baking (air), and fermenting (earth)--in his fantastic latest, Cooked.

Pollan contends that learning to cook elevated our ancient ancestors from lone animals into increasingly intelligent, civilized groups--and gave us the fuel for expanding brains--it's one of the essential acts that made us human. Now, we spend scant time doing real cooking, but we've become obsessed with watching people cook, a paradox that signals longing for that lost experience.

In his own quest to close the seed-to-table loop, he spent three years learning to cook with great pit masters, chefs, bakers, and "fermentos," making Cooked a lively, passionate exploration of the elemental appeal of making a meal.

In the spirit of diving back into our own kitchens with renewed gusto, we asked Pollan to send us his favorite cookbooks.

The Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler: As much a philosophy of everyday cooking as a cookbook (though the recipes are terrific), Adler's book shows us how to cook beautifully with the most modest of ingredients and skills.

A Platter of Figs by David Tanis: A former head chef at Chez Panisse (and now a columnist for the Dining section at the New York Times), Tanis offers a gorgeous cookbook with perfect, elegant menus to suit the season. A mainstay of our dinner parties.

The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters: All of Alice Waters' cookbooks are wonderful, but this once is the most readily approachable and offers the essential recipes for everything from a great vinaigrette to salsa verde, roast chicken and polenta. Reminds me of The Elements of Style, and just as necessary.

Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson: An inspiring book for the bread baker--my favorite primer on bread.

The Art of Fermentation by Sandor Katz: The definitive volume on all the arts of fermentation, from yogurt to kvass, sauerkraut to pickled anything you can imagine.

How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman: If it's not already in your collection, you're either already a great cook or in deep trouble. The basics on everything, and indispensable.

April 23, 2013

Coming two years after his bestselling Lost in Shangri-La, Mitchell Zuckoff's Frozen in Time again tells the dramatic story of a World War II plane crash. In fact, this time there are three of them.

In 1942, a U.S. cargo plane slams into an ice cap in Greenland, then a B-17 crashes during its search and rescue mission, then a Grumman Duck amphibious plane disappears after rescuing one of the B-17 survivors. "Talk about bad luck," Amazon senior editor Jon Foro points out in his review, describing the story as "part Alive, part Shackleton."

Zuckoff told us that the similarities between Frozen In Time and Lost in Shangri-La (both Amazon Best of the Month picks) were consistent with his passion for stories about human endurance. "I'm drawn to people pulled to extremes, pulled beyond expected limit," he said.

Yet, he didn't want to straight-up replicate Shangri-La with another WWII rescue story. What appealed to him was the modern-day piece of Frozen In Time. In 2011, Zuckoff met with a photographer and explorer named Lou Sapienza, a "tireless dreamer" who had been searching for the Grumman Duck and the men who disappeared. Zuckoff loved the idea of telling alternating stories, present and past. "I was excited about the challenge of writing a modern day story and a historic story," he said.

The key was getting Sapienza to cooperate. When they first met, Zuckoff felt like he was being auditioned. In fact, at one point Sapienza asked, Why shouldn't I be working with Jon Krakauer? Zuckoff told him, "You should. But he's not here. I am." Sapienza seemed to like that, and the two men hit it off, which led to Zuckoff's participation in the risky 2012 expedition to find the Duck.

"The participatory part was fantastic," Zuckoff said. "It was one of the most exciting experiences I've ever had."

When it came time to sit and write, however, the journalist found it difficult to make himself part of the story. "That was the harder part: I've never written in the first person," Zuckoff said. "That writing is some of the hardest writing I've ever done."

The result, as Amazon reviewer Foro put it, is "a thrilling story of courage, perseverance, and loyalty that spans decades." We asked Zuckoff to describe a few details of his writing life.

Space

I write exclusively in abook-filled, 12-foot-square office in my house, at a three-level desk crammedinto a corner. On the first level is my keyboard and, to my left, a stack ofdocuments for a book I'm either working on or should be working on. On thesecond level is the computer monitor, flanked on either side by more stacks ofpapers and high-tech tools such as scissors and a box of index cards. On thetop level, to the left, is a printer, and on the right is an old-fashioned lampwith a green glass shade. From it hangs a boar's tooth necklace I was given inNew Guinea. Next to the lamp is a model of the World War II plane I wrote aboutin Lost in Shangri-La, given to me by a friend, and metal box withan orca tooth and a dollar bill signed by everyone on the Greenland expeditionI wrote about in Frozen in Time. The walls are covered with awardplaques won by my wife, a photographer with The Boston Globe, along with a fewI've won, which reassure me on difficult writing days. The window is on theother side of the room, which is far enough away that I can't throw myselfthrough it on those same tough writing days.

Soundtrack

At the risk of sounding like apretentious git, I never listen to music when I write because I'm trying tohear the rhythm of the words. I once tried listening to jazz and found myselfeyeing the window on the other side of the room.

Fuel

Pretentious git, Part II: When I'vereached the point in my research where I"m ready to write at length--weeks on end, usually without missing a day--I make sure I'm downing a lot ofprotein. Years ago, I read a great piece by Sally Jenkins of The WashingtonPost about writing and playing high-level sports, and one of the takeawaymessages was that my natural tendency to seek a sugar high when sitting at thekeyboard was about as useful as eating a bag of M&Ms to run a marathon.Having said that, when I've finished writing for the day (usually very late atnight) I reward myself with something sweet, occasionally followed by a glassof port.

Words

When I'm working intensely on a book,I read books that are almost always directly related to what I'm writing--histories, biographies, sometimes technical manuals. To escape my own writing,I read The New Yorker because it cleanses some of the bad writing I'm forced toread and replaces it with beautiful voices in 5,000- to 15,000-word sonatas.

Inspiration

I'm a huge believer in theexercise-nap combo platter. I'm serious. If I exercise early in the day andtake a nap, I've got the energy I need to write deep into the night.

Temptation

I mostly try to avoid questionsabout my writing process. No, really, I try to avoid everything. I tend towrite at night, when the house is quiet, everyone including my dog is asleep,and emails aren't popping into my inbox every minute.

I wasn't very good at canon. Oh, I got better as I got older, but as a kid, I pieced together my comics knowledge like a mudlark, scobbing together whatever titles I could find in local shops and libraries "“ new copies, second-hand ones, beaten-up and ripped-to-shreds remnants - without any understanding of publisher or continuity. I'd cross-fertilize them with the various exciting bits and pieces I'd picked up, all the rumours and half-truths regarding superheroes.

This led to an idiosyncratic version of the DCU. Once, many years ago, as a very young child, I was delighted to discover a pile of comics in an attic. They featured a blond, orange-shirted superhero who could speak to fish. "Ah," I thought, settling down to read. "This must be this 'Superman' of whom I've heard so much." I was intrigued that so many of his adventures were maritime.

As the years passed, I got a bit more systematic, but I never lost the excitement at the sheer chaotic variety of costumes, monikers and powers I might find fighting for justice, every time I opened a comic. It was always a surprise. This addiction to the proliferation of the superheroic is something many of us never grow out of.

In fact, inventing superheroes is one of the basic games of childhood. Tie a towel around your neck and come up with a powerset, all the abilities you think you'll need. Justify that hot mess as coherent by some ingenious, tendentious argument. Finally, give your wonder a name. (Electrical blast and tiger stripes? Electrotiger!) This is what we do. Like countless kids around the world, I was a martyr to superherogenesis.

And then, one early-eighties morning, I picked up, with my usual surrender to chance, a copy of what I now know to be New Adventures of Superboy [issue #] 30. Within which was a B-feature, a secondary story - something called "Dial H for Hero."

I pieced together the schtick of what it was I was reading. Some rather annoying boy called Chris King, had, because of some magic dial, been turned into "Mr Opposite." In which guise, shameless in his purple-and-black outfit, he could make anything behave the opposite of how it should. Chris King had never had this epistemologically troubling power before, nor ever would again. He knew, though, the moment the ability arose in him, at utter random, what it was he could do and how. And he knew his superhero name.

That was how this worked.

After a while, I could breathe again. My heartbeat finally slowed. Thus began my devotion to the H-Dial.

Whatever the particularities of the H-Dial story - and it's appeared in titles since the 1960s - this basic norm, the surrender of the dialer to random powers has remained the same. And no matter how much the storylines, particularly the original ones, played this for gags, for absurdities and thrills, for the simple joy of endless superpower invention, there were always a few troubling elements to the situation.

The DCU has long been a very crowded place. It brims with heroes. And pretty much all the obvious and useful powers have been taken. So if you have a title the very raison d'etre of which is to come up with two, three, four or more new heroes every month, and you don't want to repeat yourself, there's a drive to more and more unlikely characters. Where does that leave you? Where does that leave the dialer? With the Human Starfish, is where. With the superbaby Mighty Moppet. With King Coil. A giant, animated, superheroic coil. With coil powers.

It was the 60s.

It's pretty standard these days to point out that putting on a mask, inventing a name and running around hitting people is a very odd thing to do. To put it charitably, it bespeaks identity issues. So what about when you don't even get to choose your superheroic identity? And it changes every day? And might reboot you as a starfish or a giant coil? What does that do to a crimefighter?

And you think Batman needs therapy.

Perhaps most intriguing of all the questions the dial threw up was, "Where does it come from?" In a setting as baroque and as intimately explored as the DCU, it's almost beyond belief that this has never been answered. There've barely even been hints. It's unlikely that Dave Wood, who wrote the first scripts in House of Mystery, wanted to do anything other than come up with a mechanism to invent endless heroes. But his brilliant success at this inexorably raised the question. What could possibly have led to the creation of this dial?

For a long time, Dial H for Hero and its successors have been my comics obsessions. No other title, I've long explained to any of my poor friends who'll listen, combines childlike joy in superhero-creation, a neo-surrealist faith in the aleatory, a post-Vertigo focus on the erosion of identity, and an opening into one of the few utter mysteries left in the history of the DCU.

Also King Coil.

For all these reasons, during the years when I would periodically chat with people from DC about the possibility of writing comics for them, after we had batted various ideas and titles around, I would conclude the conversation, every single time, increasingly plaintively, with "You should let me take on Dial H."

I'd do my riff. I'd urge them to see that these areas needed to be investigated. I'd talk about fidelity to the inspired genius of the original idea, a respectful updating, humorous and goofy still, but serious, too, an investigation of lost and unstable souls. A realisation of costs as well as benefits, of the terrible mechanisms at play. There could be, I would say, there had to be a slow creep of understanding, an origin story. Once there was an epic and epochal war. These dials came from somewhere, I'd say. I would whisper the phrase "the Exchange." I would mutter about "the lost Operator."

"You should let me take on Dial H," I'd say. The DC people would smile politely. That would be that.

My novel The Golem and the Jinni took me seven years to write, and I'd estimate that at least two of those years were spent just on research. As it turns out, if you're writing a historical fantasy set in late 19th-century New York City and centered around two different cultures, you might end up sitting in the library for a while.

Along the way I came across quite a few items that surprised me -- whether they should've or not -- and that proved that no matter how much I researched, I always had more to learn.

Here are a few of the more interesting tidbits I found:

1. Most of the Syrians who first immigrated to the United States were Christian, not Muslim.

Back in the late 19th century, what's now Lebanon was still part of Greater Syria, and ruled by the Ottoman Empire. Times were tough for Christian families in the Lebanon Valley. Because of the inheritance laws, many had only a small patch of land to farm on, not nearly enough to support themselves. Plus, a lot of young men were looking for ways to avoid conscription into the Imperial army. (You could buy your way out, but the price tag was usually prohibitive.) An Arab delegation came to the U.S. for the 1876 Centennial exhibition in Philadelphia, saw for themselves the business opportunities to be had, went home and spread the word. Soon the emigration was underway. Many got an extra push from American missionaries in Syria, who gave them letters of introduction written in English to their parishes back in the States.

2. Some Jewish bakers sell their bakeries during Passover, and then buy them back again.

This one kind of delighted me. I realized I had a problem: one of my main characters worked in a Jewish bakery. What would happen when Passover rolled around, the eight days a year when it's forbidden to eat leavened bread? I did a little research, and discovered this excellent solution. It seems that some Jewish bakery owners, rather than shut the business down and get rid of all their flour -- a very expensive prospect -- choose to "sell" the bakery to a non-Jew for the duration of the holiday. A contract is drawn up (overseen by a rabbi), a nominal sum is exchanged, and voila! The bakery is now exempt from the strictures of Jewish law. Then, at the end of Passover, the money is returned, and ownership reverts to the original owner. It's the sort of work-around that some folks like to look down on, but I think it's a great example of practicing one's faith as part of the wider world. Unfortunately, I couldn't use it in the book. I tried to work it in, but the explanation was far too bulky and complicated. Plus, a few of my test readers thought I'd made it up, and told me it sounded unrealistic!

3. It used to be you couldn't walk on the grass in Central Park.

Back when Central Park first opened in the late 1850s, the rules of conduct were much more stringent than today. Central Park had been built so that New Yorkers could get more fresh air and exercise, but to the park commissioners that meant genteel and well-behaved exercise, the kind that kept to clearly marked walkways and carriage paths. The park's expanses of meadow were meant to be looked at, not run upon. Boys could only play baseball if they brought a note from their principal. Large picnics were not allowed, which left out groups of more than a few people -- and in those days, that meant the Irish and Italians and other immigrant families who might've appreciated a nice picnic in the grass. For a while, the result was that the park's visitors were mostly upper-crust New Yorkers, with their nannies and expensive carriages. But then the middle class began to petition the Park commissioners for more access, and by the end of the 19th century, the rules had relaxed quite a bit.

4. Blatant racism, sexism, and classism used to be the norm in respected newspapers.

I kind of knew about this one, but it still caught me off guard, every single time. As a society we still have a very long ways to go, but if you want an object lesson in how far we've come -- at least in what's acceptable to say in print -- just check out any New York Times article from the late 1800s that has anything to do with women, immigrants, or the poor. For a good example, there's "New York's Syrian Quarter," an 1899 article profiling the then-new neighborhood of Little Syria. The writer spends an entire paragraph comparing the relative attractiveness of the Syrian women: first to those of other nationalities ("[T]here are, indeed, a number of amazingly pretty girls, prettier, one is tempted to assert, than those of any other foreign colony of New York"), and then to each other (the poorer women "have no beauty of either face or form," but the more prosperous merchants' wives "are attractive, and markedly.") Of the neighborhood newspapers he says, "Three newspapers thrive in the quarter, more remarkable even to the eye with their Arabic fonts of type that look like schoolboy pothooks than are the strange Yiddish news sheets of the Ghetto." You mean there are alphabets that don't look like English? How quaint! But how does anyone read them? A few paragraphs later, he's back to the ladies again, lamenting that the "better class" of women are forced to stay in at night, so that they can't "be viewed by every Syrian Tom and Dick." Maybe they're just trying to avoid the creepy Times reporter!

April 19, 2013

As part of Marvel Comics' new Marvel Now! initiative, long-running superhero teams sport new rosters, costumes, and motives. After the events of Avengers vs. X-Men, both teams were left reeling, but it was the X-Men who suffered the biggest loss: Professor X at the hands of team leader Cyclops. No one felt this loss more than Henry McCoy (a.k.a. "Beast"), who was also a founding member with Scott Summers.

Additionally, Beast keeps a secret close to his furry blue chest: he is dying. And as a super-scientist, if he cannot find a cure no one can. Except. What if there was a way for Henry McCoy to consult with the only person who could match his brains? What if Henry McCoy were to enlist the help of Henry McCoy, and what if the only person who could talk Scott Summers out of his murderous funk is Scott Summers? This mind-bending hypothetical kicks of All-New X-Men Vol. 1 (subtitled Yesterday's X-Men"”everything old is all-new again),written by superstar hit-maker Brian Michael Bendis, who left a mountain of Avengers stories and influence to freshen up Marvel's mighty mutants. With this first volume, Bendis has already crafted what feels like a classic run, where the pages cannot turn quickly enough and the revelations compound.

In order to consult with himself, Beast does what X-Men d he time travels. In the past, Beast finds the original X-Men and pleads with them to travel to their future to help the X-Men of present day. Plus, two Henry McCoys have a better chance at saving his/their life/lives than one. It's heady stuff and Bendis wisely skips over the finer details of paradoxes in favor of character moments, where he excels. Beast sees a young Jean Grey, as yet untouched by the Dark Phoenix and her ultimate fate, and marvels at her youth, attitude, and beauty. Of course, yesterday's X-Men hop aboard with Beast to the present day, where they encounter the all-new X-Men, a team weary from decades of inner mutant battles and a public who hates and fears them now more than ever.

Young Scott is mortified and in disbelief once he sees what his older self has done to mutantkind. Jean has a heartbreaking moment where she, referring to her older and absent self, asks, "Where am I?" Despite Bendis' sharp and punchy dialogue, none of this emotion would be believable without Stuart Immonen's artwork. Here, at the top of his game, Immonen illustrates individual faces with true personality"”Shadowcat especially shines, wrinkling her nose, furrowing her brow; it's clear she's as much an artist's favorite as she is a fan favorite.

All of the above happens in the first two chapters, and to give any more away would be detrimental to what Bendis has planned. OK, maybe two more things: First, I strongly suggest reading The Dark Angel Saga by Rick Remender because of its ramifications on the character Angel. And second, does anyone else have the sneaking suspicion that the bleak, present-day X-Men are on a collision course to the post-apocalyptic alternate future of Days of Future Past(especially since the new film will focus on that timeline)? Could Scott Summers inadvertently cause this event, and could yesterday's X-Men be here to prevent that future from ever occurring?

Marvel Now!'s scope is not limited to the X-Men. A new Avengers book by Jonathan Hickman, Jeremy Opena, and Adam Kubert will focus on the gigiantic roster and cosmic ideas, and Omni-favorite Rick Remender pulls a reverse Bendis: he leaves the X-verse in favor of the Avengers in Uncanny Avengers, where Scott Summers' brother, Alex ("Havok"), must rise from his brother's shadow and lead Earth's Mightiest Heroes. And if you like time travel, do not miss Jason Aaron and Esad Ribic's Thor: God of Thunder, where Thor seeks a ghastly foe, the God Butcher, across the distant past, present, and far future. It's the best Thor title in a long, long time (the collected edition releases in June), and Aaron brings humor and unimaginable torment to the usually stalwart Asgardian hero.

April 18, 2013

Every so often, you'll come across a book that burns so hot and bright it'll sear a shadow on your vision. For a while afterwards, everything you look at will have the book's imprint on it; your world will be colored in the book's tones, and you will glimpse the book's characters on the street and feel your heart knocking in your chest for a few blocks, as if you'd escaped a close call.

This is how I felt after I read Rachel Kushner's brilliant The Flamethrowers. The night I finished it, I dreamt of racing motorcycles across sunshot salt-flats and of floating in glimmering Italian swimming pools. In the morning, I tried to describe the book to a friend but I eventually faltered into silence.

"This is a beautiful book," I finally said, "a book full of truth, a book about art and motorcycle racing and radicalism, about innocence and speed and stepping up to a dangerous brink, a book very deeply about the late seventies in New York City and its powerful blend of grittiness and philosophical purity."

"Oh," said my friend. "So. What is it about?"

I tried again. I said, "It's a love story, about a young artist under the sway of an older, established artist, scion of a motorcycle family, who betrays her, and she joins up with an underground group in Italy."

"It feels like a contemporary European novel, philosophical and intelligent, with an American heart and narrative drive," I said.

"Oh," said my friend.

"Just read the book," I said, and my friend did, and loved it to speechlessness, as well. "Wow," is all he could say when he returned the book to me.

I don't blame him. The truth is, this is a strange and mysterious novel, a subtle novel. Much of its power comes from the precision of Kushner's language and how carefully she allows the flashes of perception to drive the narrative forward. See Reno, the offbeat narrator, describing ski racing to her lover, Sandro, saying, "Ski racing was drawing in time." Suddenly you can see what she means, a body's crisp slaloming down the white slope, the way the skier draws a perfect serpent down the clock.

Or see Reno, racing her motorcycle: "Far ahead of me, the salt flats and mountains conspired into one puddled vortex. I began to feel the size of this place. Or perhaps I did not feel it, but the cycle, whose tires marked its size with each turn, did. I felt a tenderness for them, speeding along under me."

There is something deeply eerie happening under the words, something on the verge of tipping over and spilling out; and, at the same time, a gentleness and innocence at the core of all that noise and speed.

Rachel Kushner is an unbelievably exciting writer, a writer of urgent and beautiful sentences and novels that are vast in their ambition and achievement. I finished it months ago, but The Flamethrowers -- startling, radiant -- still haunts me.